[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"

[Reinier Bakels]

> By default, I think that people should be permitted to create 
> noncommercial derivative works of a commercial work.
> What I fail to see, however, is why people with excessive amounts of 
> artistic pride need to be protected, when the end result is stifling 
> creativity for everyone else. As long as their names aren't abused to  let 
> on that they endorse the derivative work, I simply fail to see the 
> problem. Authors do not have any natural right not be offended.
>
Again, this is not black and white. Of course, the author may not prohibit 
all derivative works as he desires. But there are limits imho. Somehow the 
difficulty is that copyright protects works of art with a very small "a" to 
works of art with a very large "A", from the users manual of a hard disk 
recorder to a Nobel prize winning novel, and the cultural effect of bad 
adaptations etc. varies accordingly.

Note that the right of reuse of works (in various forms) currently is also 
under debate under legal scholars 
(http://www.ip.mpg.de/ww/de/pub/aktuelles/declaration_on_the_three_step_/declaration.cfm 
 - in many languages) and they would be happy to get political support!

Frankly, I would appreciate a "moral" right of the author to decide on the 
use of his work after the term for commercial exploitation has expired, in 
particular if that is shortened to five years, as PP proposes. How could 
open source software licences (GNU) otherwise be properly protected? Bill 
Gates stole Dos from the QDOS developers, he stole Windows from IBM, why 
wouldn't he steal Linux and add some bells and whistles to create an even 
more attractive properietary version?

reinier